Hitchcocks Forum

Time to take the swinging arm out and grease the bearings - I did the suspension linkage back in the summer, but the bike has now developed a "creak" everytime you sit on the bike or take it off the sidestand / centrestand.

When I had the calipers done the other week the mechanic commented on it and advised me to take the swinging arm out and grease it ASAP before the bearings wear out, he said that it is a common fault caused by a lack of factory greasing.

Guess it is a straightforward job, just a pain dismantling everything and putting it all back together.

Job for next week.

So the Himmy has swing arm bearings that need greasing and a lot of work to get at them? Yet its long term predecessor had Metalastic bearings that don’t.

Well there’s progress for you!

Seems a rather odd choice on an adventure bike which may well be used under extreme conditions. Metalastik would have been 'maintenance free' . Grease and grit make an excellent grinding paste. Hope there are good seals. I can't see from the parts list drawing what the Meteor is fitted with... It just calls it 'bush' but as there are seals I presume it too has bearings requiring greasing. Let us know(with a photo or three) how getting it apart and greased goes.

New meteor has plastic bushes, same as the 500.
Metalastic would be of no use on long travel suspension like the Himmy.
Needle bearings with decent seals are the smoothest and strongest BUT they are not maintenance free.

Golly yes! I've just looked at the specs for the Himalayan. At over 7 inches of rear suspension travel that's well beyond the capabilities of a rubber bush! Is it a plastic bearing on all the later Royal Enfields?

The 535GT has proper bearings as does the new 650s.
It looks like all the 500 uce variants use the plastic bush as standard.

Thanks, Haggis.

OK did the deed today, everything looks to have been assembled with no grease, just a hint of grease on one of the bearings.

Pulled everything apart and gave it all a liberal coating of grease before re assembly, including the bolt that goes through the frame.

The bearings are fairly large diameter roller bearings but come on RE assembling them dry.......

Hi, Greeves used rubber bushes on the front fork which gave 6.5 inches of travel so for the same angle of movement a longer swingarm should give 7 + without much bother. Vince

Is there somewhere that angled grease nipples could be fitted? Even my 1964 BSA C15 had grease points in the ends of its swing arm spindle (those bikes had bronze or brass bushes for the steel spindle).